Checkered Flag (Jaguar) Review

Checkered Flag (Jaguar) Review

Date Released: 28 November 1994

Date Played: 31 October 2019

Checkered Flag is a racing game developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Atari. It was originally released as a handheld game for the Atari Lynx in 1991 where it was met with praise by critics and gamers alike.  Three years later, the game was remade for the commercially disastrous Jaguar game console.  This time around, the game is a woefully bad 3D polygonal racer that was blatantly trying to rip off the Virtua Racing aesthetic instead of sticking to the 2D sprite based visuals that were common during that time period.  Even today, many of those chunky polygon looking racers can have a sort of charming appeal to them that seems to have that retro-trendy vibe that's cool again. The aforementioned Virtual Racing is a still a classic as is Hard Drivin' and Stunt Racers as well.  Luckily, Checkered Flag, while very primitive looking by today's standards still holds up in a very nostalgic sort of way and falls right in with those other games in terms of its visuals. The sky, in particular, seems to be digitized pictures of actual clouds that had been photographed.  It clashes with the polygons of the gameplay in a wonderful and silly way that is so characteristic of 90s games that were trying to push for anything resembling photorealism.

Unfortunately, outside of the visuals, the gameplay doesn't hold up quite as well.  There are three modes to the game to choose from. Exhibition, where you can select you track, weather, number of laps, number of racers, and the color of your car (they are all identical) for a single race,  Free Practice, where you do the same but without any opponents, and finally Tournament mode where you try to come in 1st place against 5 other racers over 10 different races of 10 laps each.  It's an OK amount of content and is certainly par of the course for this time period. The tracks are all very basic and are set in boring locations that don't do a good job of being memorable in any meaningful way and all start to blur together in your mind after only a couple of runs through the game.  You have several different camera angles to view things, but as we've all learned by now, most of them are more cinematic and basically pointless for actually attempting to drive.  Remember when having a bunch of crazy camera angels was a selling point of a game?  My, how times have changed.

Where the game really falters in an unforgivable way is in the control department.  Checkered Flag performs extremely poorly and runs at around 10 frames per second.  It's so choppy and disorienting that it's almost impossible to control your car or even tell what is going on.  The action is simply too fast for such a low framerate and you'll find yourself constantly careening all over the track as you crash over and over again.  This enormous problem is only made worse by the abysmally poor handling of the cars.  If you hold down the left or right directional buttons for more than a fraction of a second, your car attempts to make a 90 degree turn and smashes into the wall.  As much as I tried, I just couldn't get the hang of controlling the cars in any sort intuitive way.  The only way to play effectively that I could figure out was to tap the directional buttons constantly.  Unfortunately, this doesn't allow the car to make turns fast enough to deal with any of the maneuvers that are required of you.  If you try to hold down the button, you'll oversteer and crash once again.  So, you end up doing a tap, tap, hold, hold, tap, hold sort of pattern that works well enough but makes the game far too labor intensive to be enjoyable and feels like real chore. Your thumb will be cursing you the entire time it's having to deal with the less than stellar directional pad of the Jaguar controller.  

Despite not being able to see what I'm doing, not being able to steer, and constantly crashing, I was able to complete all tracks in the game, come in 1st place on most, and even set the track record a number of times.  So, not only do you have a completely frustrating experience, it doesn't even pack a challenge to keep you coming back. So, this just leaves us with a game that's a ripoff of Virtual Racing, doesn't look as good, performs much worse, and isn't nearly as fun to play.  I guess if you were one of the sad few that only had an Atari Jaguar to play back in the mid 90s, then this was your only real option for a game like this... and believe me when I say that I can empathize with you over that struggle.  

Today, Checkered flag is one of the most affordable games on the Atari Jaguar; and in a time where retro game prices are shooting through the roof, this is one of the few that are still relatively obtainable.  But, heed my advice, unless you're aiming for a complete Atari Jaguar collection, don't bother picking up this one.  After an hour, you'll have seen all the content that it has to offer and the buyer's remorse will be palpable.

Final Status: Completed

Final Score: 2/10 (almost unplayable by today's standards)

 

Fast Striker (PS4) Review

Fast Striker (PS4) Review

Release Date: 16 October 2018

Date Played: 29 January 2022

Introduction: 

Fast Striker started out as a homebrew game developed by NG.Dev for the NeoGeo MVS in 2010.  Shortly afterwards, it was ported to the Dreamcast (once again as a homebrew) before getting an official port to the PS4 in 2018.  EastAsiaSoft published the game and released it as a physical edition that was met with middle of the road reviews from both the critics and the public alike.  I played it originally in March of 2019 before deciding to revisit it again and wasn't surprised that my opinion hadn't really changed from that of the critics or even myself from my prior experiences with it.  It's a competent vertical shmup that plays well, has a few interesting ideas, and can even be a little fun. But, it definitely has the "homebrew" feel that so many of NG. Dev's games suffer from and you can feel how simple and barebones it is right from the onset.

Gameplay:  

Fast Striker is your basic vertically scrolling shmup.  You have a standard shot that fires upwards as you repeatedly tap the fire button (I hate having to do this) that becomes a focus shot when held down.  Just like with Cave games, you maintain your speed when tapping and slow down greatly when focus firing.  This will allow you to dodge various bullet patterns with adjustable speed as needed.  In addition to this, you also have a reverse shot to take out any enemies approaching you from the rear.  Bombs are absent from the game, but you are given several shields that will make you invulnerable and even able to crash into enemies for damage if you're so inclined.  Your firepower can be upgraded a couple of levels by destroying one of the spacemen floating around in the level and collecting the powerup he drops.  If you're fully powered up, he will drop a much needed additional shield.  Making sure to always destroy these spacemen, which can be difficult sometimes because they take quite a few shots to take down and tend to zip all around the screen as they take damage, is essential because you'll be using your shields very often to circumvent the very quick and thick bullet patterns that are thrown at you.  These bullet patterns are an odd mix of Raiden style that are super fast mixed with more danmaku style slow patterns that you have to carefully weave your way through.  This can be difficult as your ship is rather on the large side and can be a bit clunky to fit in between the gaps.  Sometimes, these patterns are a bit too much to handle and don't feel very well designed as they seem virtually impossible to dodge. You can tell the developers were intending for you to save your shields for these moments.  Sadly, this turns the game into more of a memorization exercise of when to use your shields for invulnerability rather than a skill test of dodging bullets. These sort of "memorizer" games can be fun at times, and Fast Striker is no different. But, don't go into the game hoping on your dodging skills to carry you the whole way.  

The gimmick of this game comes with the character select system.  There are no independent character select screens and difficulty screens.  Instead, each difficulty is tied to each of the three different characters and is focused around their play style.  This includes the scoring system as well as the tactics you'll need to employ to succeed.  The first of the characters is Popo, a blue robot, who is assigned to the Novice difficulty.  He has a spread shot for when you tap the fire button that focuses itself when you hold down the button.  He's very weak, but has the easiest difficulty on the levels, so it balances out.  As you kill enemies, they will drop star tokens that you can collect to increase your score multiplier and also your difficulty rank.  You play through the first 5 stages with this character before receiving a message telling you to try on Normal Mode.

The second character is a green guy called Max Speed (...sigh) and he plays much the same way as Popo except your firepower is greatly increased.  The playstyle is flipped with the tap being your spread shot this time around, and the focus attack being a very powerful barrage of lasers.  At first, this character feels much easier than Popo because you plow through enemies so much faster, but the difficulty catches up to you quickly and will give you a run for your money.  You'll certainly be doing a lot more dodging in this mode and you'll have to start memorizing patterns of you want to survive. You'll be collecting symbols with radiation warnings on them instead of stars this time around, but the scoring system is pretty much the same.  After clearing the 5th stage, you'll have access to the much, much harder 6th, and final stage of the game.

The third character is a pink female named Chloe Valentine and her difficulty level is known as Maniac.  Her attack style is very similar to the green guy, but she doesn't collect shields from spacemen.  Instead, you have a gauge at the bottom of the screen that fills up when you collect her scoring tokens and once it's full you'll get an extra shield.  This time around your score multiplier is on a timer and you'll have to continually collect score tokens before the short timer reaches zero.  Of course, the difficulty in this mode is much more difficult and will be a feat to 1 credit clear even for a very skilled player.

The final mode is called Omake, and is brutally difficult.  You'll be playing with a pallet swapped version of the green guy, but with the attack style of the pink girl.  Since the bullets are so fast and dense in this mode, you won't be required to collect any score tokens and your multiplier is now on a timer that is tied to killing enemies in quick succession.  It's the most fun mode by far, I just wish it wasn't the most difficult because there's no way to practice it other than playing the game from the beginning.

To help you out, you can get extends at certain point totals (they very by difficulty) and extra credits based on how many times you have continued over all of your attempts.  These extra credits max out at 9, but should be enough for you to credit feed through Novice and Normal if you put in some effort.  Still, if you want to make it through Maniac or Omake, you're going to need to put in some real practice because not even 9 credits is enough to make it easy on yourself. These modes would have be a lot more fun if there was a stage select or training mode to help you learn to route and memorize the levels.  Having to start a shmup from the beginning each time you want to make a little progress on it is a recipe for frustration and a great way to overstay your welcome.

One other theme of the game is environmental hazards during the levels.  More than half of the levels are focused around weaving your way through patterns of blocks, giant ships that move in formation around the screen, flashing laser walls, and indestructible orbs that continually spew streams of bullets at you.  These sorts of mechanic are pretty common in both vertical and horizontal shmups, but this time around, they feel a little excessive since most of the stages have them whereas in most other games that employ them you might only encounter them occasionally. 

Presentation:

Fast Striker isn't much to look at.  It was originally designed to be played on a console that was developed in 1989 and it really shows.  While many games for the NeoGeo have gorgeous sprite work and stunning uses of color that were remarkably advanced for the time and were essentially equal to what you'd find in an actual arcade, Fast Striker instead opts for Prerendered CGI backgrounds with chunky ship and enemy sprites. The backgrounds, while done well and impressive to see on a NeoGeo are very basic and monotonous.  They lack any sort of color and make the whole game have this sort of washed out look that really isn't very appealing.  The first stage you'll fly over a grey city, the second stage is a grey tunnel, the third stage is another grey tunnel with some blue accents.  Stage 4 mixes things up by having you fly through black space with a single planet in the background.  Stage 5 is a return to another grey tunnel, and finally stage 6 has you flying over a bundle of cables.  It's really, really boring and uninspired but you can tell that it was just the best the NG. Dev could do.  After all, this was done as a passion project for two guys who were struggling to fit CGI graphics on a system designed for sprites and limited memory.  In addition to this, the enemies are usually just blobby shapes or generic space ships that don't really stand out and all of the bosses are just a giant space ship or something like it.  Overall, the presentation is very generic and lackluster and isn't going to win any awards in the art design department.  Luckily, the game runs at a smooth 60fps so, you're not going to be inhibited by choppy gameplay.  

In addition to the boring art style, you're also given an even more boring techno/trance soundtrack.  It sounds like all of NG.Dev's other games and rather than amping up the intensity of your gaming session, it instead lulls you into a sort of drowsiness that only serves to exacerbate the boredom you'll experience by the game's very dull visuals.  Just like the backgrounds of the game, the music is very repetitive and doesn't have much going for it in terms of originality or catchiness.

Conclusion:

Fast Striker is an ok vertical shmup that is a little too barebones. I commend NG.Dev for trying to do something new with the whole difficulty and game mechanics being tied to specific characters idea.  But, sadly, instead of this adding some novel content in the game it actually makes you feel more limited in your options.  The game would have been better served by sticking to the standard structure that well all know to work and letting us pick our preferred character, difficulty, and scoring mechanics independently.  

The gameplay and scoring is pretty fun and controlling the ships feels nice and fluid, but the bullet speed and patterns are a bit unbalanced and too focused on you having to rely on your shields.  Also, there's just too many environmental hazards that you have to fidget around with while trying to kill enemies and avoid their bullets. It often makes the game feel puzzle based like Ikaruga... but not nearly as well thought out or good and these feel like obstacles that are getting in the way of your fun rather than the awesome set pieces the developers were aiming for.  Sadly, the visuals and music really bring the game down a good bit. It's hard to get really invested in the game when the overall package looks so bland and amateurish.  If NG.Dev had stuck to a more classic NeoGeo look when developing this game, I could see it as being an above average shooter.  As it stands, its just an OK shmup wrapped up in a very ugly and pedestrian package.  

Final Status: Beaten

Final Score: 6/10 (ok)

 

Sol Divide (PS1) Review

Sol Divide (PS1) Review

Date Released: 11 March 2003

Date Played: 27 January 2022

Introduction:

Sol Divide is one of the most painfully terrible games I've ever played and I'm absolutely shocked that it has received as many ports as it has.  It was developed by Psikyo for arcades back in 1997 before being ported to several home consoles. It's a departure from their normal types of games and tries to blend a horizontal shmup with an RPG while throwing in some fighting game elements into the mix  I have played this game three different times on three different consoles, and each time I play it I feel like it only gets worse. I Originally played this game on the PS2 in 2006 where I felt like it was just a boring arcade game. Then, I played it again on the Nintendo Switch in 2018 where it was a boring arcade game with so much input delay that it was practically impossible.  Now, I've decided to try to redeem Sol Divide by playing what is considered to be the absolute best port of the game, the Playstation 1 version.  

You may have noticed that this version was released in 2003. Two whole years after the PS2 was released and almost halfway through the cycle leading up to the following console generation. This is such a bizarre choice for releasing their game that I had all of these theories brewing in my head trying to rationalize a reason why they would have done this.  The best thing I could come up with was that the publisher was contractually obligated to release it on a home console in the United States, but knew the game was so bad that they decided to bury it by putting it on the previous generation Playstation to save face and money. Sadly, we know this isn't the case, because they released the game on the PS2 just a few years later (and once again right as the PS3 was coming out). So, there as to be some other reason for doing this.  Why would you release your game time and time again on a console that's one it's way out?  You know the game isn't good and isn't going to sell well, why even bother?  At least on the PS2 version it's bundled with the much better Dragon Blaze. I'm at a complete loss for what actually happened and the mystery of why this all came to be is, by far, the most interesting aspect of the game to me.

Despite all of the terrible choices centered around this miserable game, there are still people out there who consider the game underrated or as "hidden gem."  Don't listen to what they have to say, because they're wrong.  Sol Divide is an objectively bad game with almost no redeeming qualities.  It's a broken mess, and is not only extremely boring while being maddeningly frustrating, it's also barely playable.

Story:

There is some nonsensical story about the armies of Satan invading some fantasy kingdom and you have to stop them.  It's all very convoluted and hard to discern because there's very little information about it out there.  Even the Wikipedia page for this game is mostly blank and only has basic information about it's release date and critical reception. Most of the information about the narrative has to be gleaned from the manual because there is practically no story given to you while you play the game.  

You're greeted by a terrible CGI cutscene that shows the skeleton of a fallen warrior lying in the sand near some ruins.  Then, you see a dragon fly by overhead... and that's it.  There's no exposition, dialog, or anything else to let you know what's going on and this cutscene could honestly be from any sort of fantasy game.  As you play the game, you're shown a map of a fantasy world in between the stages.  Obviously, you're traveling to these places, but you aren't given any idea of what these locations are or what is happening there.  Then, when you finish the game, you're greeted by one of the laziest things I've ever seen any developer do. The final cut-scene is completely in Japanese.  Let me remind you that this is the U.S. release of a game; and the final cut-scene is all Japanese text with no audio or English translation.  I'm not sure if the publisher just didn't care, didn't have the money, or didn't think anyone would ever make it this far because the game is so terrible, but it's an absolute slap in the face to have this cutscene play out after suffering through this game.

Gameplay:  

The Playstation 1 version of the game is considered to be the best not only because of it's port of the Arcade version of the game, but also because of the included Normal mode which is supposed to be more like a story-based campaign.

In Arcade mode, you being by selecting from the usual 7 difficulty settings found in most Psikyo games. These range from the insultingly titled, "Monkey" for the easiest setting, up through "Child" and on to "Very Hard" for the highest difficulty.  If you've ever played a Psikyo game, you'll be fully aware that the games pack quite a punch even on the "Monkey" setting and will not be a walk in the park.  As for this game, I've never been able to 1 credit clear it on anything harder than the easiest setting in all my attempts with it.  This isn't from a lack of skill but rather from the poorly implemented gameplay mechanics and god awful design. So, if you do make the misguided decision to play this game, don't let Psikyo's direct insult of playing on a difficulty designed for a monkey force you to play on a higher difficulty setting.  You won't have more fun that way... you'll have way less.  Believe me, I didn't even think that was possible until playing through the game on the practically impossible Normal difficulty.

You select from 1 of 3 characters to use in combat. Kashon, the hawkman (or bird person as I like to call him) who is the largest character and is evenly balanced, Vorg, the fighter who has stronger melee attacks but weak magic, and Tyora, the sexy wizard, who has strong magic but weak melee abilities.  Personally, I always go with the wizard because she seems to be the best for cheesing the game, which is really the only way I've been able to make any progress with it.  After that, you're dumped out into the first stage.

The gimmick of Sol Divide is that it's more melee focused instead of being based around shooting like most shmups.  Each character has the ability to shoot bullets, do melee attacks at close range, and cast an overly large and complex series of magic spells that are essential to make any progress.  In addition to this, you're given only one life but have a health bar to make up for it.  You also have a mana meter for casting spells that is refilled by damaging enemies with your shot or melee attacks. As you kill enemies, they drop power upgrades, additional spells, and health and mana recovery items.  It's actually pretty sound idea that seems like it would be a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, the game is executed so poorly that almost none of its systems actually works.

Here is how the game actually plays.  Each of the stages is broken up into several smaller encounters with enemies that range from bats, eyeballs, wizards, skeleton warriors, mushroom monsters, and all other manner of fantasy creatures.  These happen more like an arena battle where you move on after you clear everything rather than the game continually scrolling as you would expect in a shmup.  These arenas are broken up by mid-bosses and final bosses just like you will expect and they mostly play out exactly the same way as the other encounters.  Your ranged shot is pretty much useless and is only good for taking out the smallest and weakest of enemies.  Usually, these just sit in one place at the beginning of each encounter and let you blast them away and really only serve to waste more of your time. After that, a handful of other enemies will appear and start bobbing and weaving around the screen as they bum-rush you one at a time.  They get right up in your face and you have to use your melee attack to dispatch them before the next one rushes in.  This seems fine, except that even your melee attack is rather weak and will take several complete combos just to take down an enemy.  To help with this, each character has a dedicated special move that they can do during their combo to help take down the enemies faster but pulling it off is easier said than done.  If you are able to do it, it will make they incredibly tanky enemies much easier to deal with because using your normal combo attack seems to take forever. This makes each combat encounter much longer than it needs to be and this can be especially true for the boss fights. It's annoying, but not a deal breaker.  The real issue in clearing the arenas lies in the enemy behavior.  They are all much faster than you are and will dash in and hit you before you're able to move out of the way.  If you decide to go on the offensive, and move forward to kill them before they have a chance to come to you, they will often bob, weave, and dart out of your attack range so you end up chasing them all over the screen trying to land a hit on them.  The hit detection is very poor and it often feels like a lot of your hits just aren't making contact when they should be.  To make matters worse, your character is immobile when they are in the middle of a combo.  So, you'll be in the middle of attacking an enemy, just for it to dodge away and you'll be stuck swinging at empty air.  It's usually at this time that the other enemies on the screen decide to shoot you when there's nothing you can do about it.  This leads me to my other point, which is that your character is huge and takes up about a quarter of the vertical portion of the screen.  Enemies will send out a barrage of bullets and attacks that there's no way to avoid and you'll take damage constantly.  If that weren't enough, you basically have no invulnerability time after getting hit and you'll have enemies stun lock you constantly as you're getting hit from all sides only to watch your health bar rapidly get drained.  It's rage inducing, and the combat never feels like it's working the way it's supposed to do. 

You know how in martial arts movies the hero will be surrounded by bad guys and they will all attack him one at a time and he seems super powered and untouchable?  Well, this game is the opposite of that.  The bad guys all attack you one at a time, but it's them that are super powered and untouchable.  It won't be long until you're trying to deal with several enemies all at once as they move all around the screen while avoiding your attacks and popping off cheap shots at you.  

To help with this, you're given magic spells to use.  As you kill enemies, they will drop magic scrolls that you can collect.  These are added to your spell book shown under your life bar.  Several of these spells are permanent and you can use them whenever you have the mana, while some are single use items.  Every character can have up to 9 of them at any given time and they can be cycled through by pressing the X button.  Personally, I feel like 9 spells is WAY too many to try to deal with.  All enemies and bosses have spell weaknesses, defenses, and invulnerabilities and it's up to you to learn which one works best in most situations.  But, with 9 spells, it can be a challenge to figure out what works... especially after you blow a single use spell on a boss that has an invulnerability to it.  The permanent spells are the main ones you'll be using and they range from a flame thrower, to lighting that strikes the whole screen, and finally the most useful skill in the entire game, the freeze attack.  This spell freezes all of the enemies on the screen and actually gives you a chance to attack something without it dodging and moving all around and will also prevent the other enemies on the screen from sucker punching you while you're trying to focus on one specific guy.  Since you're mana refills by attacking, most of the game just consists of you freezing everyone on screen, attacking something until your mana is full enough to cast another freeze spell, and rinse and repeat.  You basically have to chain freeze the entire game to cheese your way through it.  The other spells like meteor and death may only appear one time in the game and are single use and can be very devastating. You typically have to save them for a boss as many of their attack patterns are practically un-dodgeable and you need to kill them as quickly as you can before losing all your health.  Luckily, the freeze trick works on most of the bosses as well.  

If you don't want to suffer alone, there's 2-player simultaneous cooperative play.  Good luck finding someone to see it through with you to the end.

In addition to the Arcade mode, this port also has a Normal mode which serves as a story based RPG.  While it is a nice feature, it is executed as lazily and poorly as everything else in the game.  What you're supposed to do is make your way through 16 floors of a dungeon.  Each floor is broken up into little combat arenas just like the main game where you'll have to kill enemies.  Doing this will level up your character which does nothing more than give you more health.  To increase your other stats, find healing items, spells, and everything else, you'll need to collect floating chests from fallen enemies.  These chests have rarity levels like copper, silver, and gold. To utilize them, you'll have to constantly be returning to the menu to open them and have a chance at a precious upgrade.  Sadly, most of the chests require a key to open; and these keys can only be found in other chests.  You'll have to grind for these keys because you really need the items found inside the locked chests.  As you progress, you'll be given the option of repeating the floor you just did before moving on.  Sadly, you'll need to do this several times in order to level up and get the items you need to survive the next floor.  Grind, grind, grind.

Occasionally, you'll have a spell drop from one of the chests and you can finally cast something.  This time around, the spells all have limited uses and you'll really need to horde them for use on the later floors.  It's a real misstep by the designers, because the magic is the most fun part of the game and removing it as a main attack feature in this mode turns the game into a really boring hack and slash game. Albeit one where neither the hacking and/or slacking are any fun.

But, just like the Arcade mode, there are some other insanely stupid design choices here as well.  Firstly, you don't even seem to get that much stronger when you manage to get items to increase your attack power and defense.  Maybe each one is like a 2% increase to your stats.  So, you need to grind a lot to make any difference.  Also, many of the floors of the dungeon are just copied and pasted from previous floors.  You'll fight the exact same enemies, mid-bosses, and final bosses in a row with only pallet swaps to differentiate them.  But, the most grievous sin of the whole game is that when you die in this mode, it takes all of your upgrades and items that you've collected and sends you ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME. Yes, you are a higher level now, but all that does is slightly increase your health.  You'll still need to redo all of the grinding you did before to upgrade your attacks and defense and collect all the keys and healing items you'll need.  If you're far enough along, the game may not take all of your attack and defense upgrades, but just like 80% of the them. But, even then, it can erase hours of progress. It's, all highly boring and grindy, and the fact that the game makes you redo it again and again is just so painful.

Presentation:

Sol Divide has prerendered 3D graphics similar to Donkey Kong Country on the SNES.  Only, in this case instead of being charming and impressive they are chunky, ugly, and muddled with an art style that is very lackluster. Everything in this game is a murky mess and you can barely make out any features of the characters as they fly over uninspired and repetitive backgrounds that are mostly stone structures. The boss design is all over the place but seems to focus on various dragons, lizards, mummies and statues.  I guess it's supposed to be like a pseudo-Egyptian theme, but it's all so haphazard and poorly thrown together that it's difficult to even tell what the theme is going for. Maybe if the developers had actually taken the time to tell me what's going on, I would be able to piece it together. The stages are all so similar with their muted color scheme and repetitive environments, that I can't even really tell them apart other than some are above ground and some are below. Not only that, you're given a really boring and sparse orchestral score to accompany your time with the game.  I've never personally been much of a fan of the Psikyo shmup soundtracks, and this one is no exception. There are no memorable points in the music and nothing I could find to grab onto. I know that this is a game from 1997, but it looked bad even for that time period and really doesn't hold up well now.  Everything about the aesthetic choices in this game are ugly and off-putting. When compared to Psikyo's other games, they don't even look like they're made by the same company.

Conclusion:

I've given this game 3 tries to prove itself over the course of 16 years and it has never been able to give me a single moment of enjoyment.  It's not in the "so bad it's good category" and it's not even in the mediocre one either.  It's just completely terrible across the board.  I want to commend Psikyo on trying something new and a little out of their comfort zone, but they just failed so spectacularly in every conceivable way that I would be remiss to give them even the slightest acknowledgement of any worthwhile effort put into this game.  It's an ugly and clunky mess that is barely playable.  The game wants you to ignore the shooting aspect of a shoot 'em up and asks you to get right up in the enemy's face and melee attack them while the other enemies get to pretend like they're in a real shmup and blast you with unavoidable bullets from across the screen. Psikyo wants you to play the game by their very specific and not fun at all rules, while they ignore those rules themselves and proceed to make the whole experience feel unfair.  The only way around this, is to basically cheese the game by freezing all of the enemies constantly which totally defeats the whole point of playing a shmup. 

I don't recommend this game to anyone and would advise everyone to steer clear.  I'm angry with myself for having purchased this game 3 separate times just trying to eek out a little enjoyment from something I feel should be good... but just isn't.  

Final Status: Beaten (at least 9 times over 3 console generations... and 1 credit cleared on Monkey)

Final Score: 2/10 (about as bad as you can get)

 

Ketsui Deathtiny (PS4) Review

 

Ketsui Deathtiny (PS4) Review

Date Released: 20 November 2020

Date Played: 25 June 2021

Introduction: 

Ketsui is a legendary vertical shmup developed by Cave for the arcades back in 2003.  Its full name is Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi and has been ported several times to various consoles ranging from the Nintendo DS, PS3, Xbox 360, and finally this definitive edition on the PS4.  It was ported by the venerable M2 and is part of their ShotTriggers series of games in which they recreate the arcade experience for home consoles as accurately as possible while adding insane amounts of extra features, modes, and training systems. Since its release, Ketsui has reigned at the top of many lists of the best shmups of all time and makes it onto almost every fan of the genre's top 10 list.  It is, without a doubt, one of the most beloved, copied, and hard shmups ever made and is an essential entry for any arcade game lover to play.  It is universally heralded by almost everyone and as of the writing of this review is ranked #1 on Shmups Forum's list of the greatest shmups of all time. 

Story:

While most people, including myself, don't really consider the story in a shmup to be that essential, it can serve to add a little mystique to an already great game.  This is definitely the case with Ketsui.  And, since the game is in Japanese and it's difficult to decipher what's going on unless you speak the language, I'll give a brief overview of the setting for you. In 2054 the world is in disarray because global warming has led to the icecaps melting and covering much of the inhabited parts of the world under water.  Because of this, there is a huge shortage of resources that humanity requires. This has lead most remaining nations of the world to be in a state of perpetual war with each other in their need to gather as many of the remaining resources as possible.  Despite their best efforts, the United Nations has been unsuccessful stopping any of these conflicts because an arms dealer called EVAC has become a tremendously wealthy war profiteer by selling hyper-advanced weaponry to all sides of the conflict. This has led to a huge decline in the world's remaining population and EVAC seems to have no regret in contributing to an even more post-apocalyptic world. Negotiations with EVAC have been unfruitful as they refuse to cooperate or cease operations in their pursuit of money and power.  Their profits have been so massive that they have created their own cities, military installations, and combat force.  Since the UN can't attack them officially but needs to stop them, they create two superpowered helicopters that are each equipped with a pair of pilots.  These helicopters are designed to look like EVAC vehicles so the pilots can sneak into the enemy cities and take them out.  Since this stealthy attack musn't be allowed to be traced back to the UN, the pilots are on a suicide mission and even if they succeed will have to sacrifice themselves and their helicopters and never return home.  In return for this, each pilot is awarded one wish by the UN for their sacrifice.  

It's a very dark premise, but I think it's quite brilliant that your goal in the game is essentially to wreak as much havoc as possible since you know that you'll never get to return. It really embodies the modern doctrine of, "you only live once" and I really like seeing the hordes of enemy vehicles explode by your hand.

I wonder what their wishes were...

Gameplay:

I'm not going to beat around the bush, Ketsui is one of the most difficult games ever made.  Many fans of the genre even say it is THE hardest shmup ever.  This is saying a lot since many gamers consider bullet-hell shmups to already be on the more extreme end of the difficulty scale and relegated to the domain of the niche gamer and otaku. But, there's no need to worry.  M2 has sorted out this issue with this version of the game.  I'll touch on their brilliant solution shortly.

The game is a military based vertical shmup that plays like most of Cave's other games. You have the standard spread shot that lets you maintain your ship's normal speed and is good for taking out large waves of smaller enemies, and you have a focus shot that deals more damage but slows you way down.  The spin, this time around, is that the focus shot has a lock-on mechanic that allows you to keep blasting the enemy even when you move out of a direct line of sight. It's a really, really nice and refreshing mechanic that allows you to focus on dodging the waves of bullets instead of having to aim your shot.  These abilities are modified even more by selecting one of the two available ships in the game.  The first ship has a wider spread shot, fast lock-on speed, and slower movement while the other has a narrow spread, slow lock-on, and faster movement.  Both ships feel really balanced and it's possible to clear the game with either of them.  So, pick the one that suits your playstyle and start learning how to use it as best you can.  Both ships also have the standard bomb that does massive damage and can save you in a pinch.

Ketsui truly stands out in the gameplay department and is a masterclass in refined and interesting enemy placement, bullet patterns, and set-pieces. The whole experience is exhilarating, fluid, fun, and so well constructed that it puts most other shmups to shame.  Learning the levels and finding a way to route through them is basically every shmup fan's dream. In terms of arcade style gameplay, Ketsui is practically perfect and I've never heard anyone voice any negativity about it. The reason for this adoration stems from its simple, yet challenging and brilliant scoring system.  Now, normally, I tend to play for survival when it comes to shmups, but in the case of Ketsui, it's so good that even I got into it.  I'll do my best to explain it here, but keep in mind that reading about it is far more difficult than experiencing it for yourself. 

The game essentially rewards you for risky behavior (it is a suicide mission after all). When you kill enemies with your spreadshot, they drop these green chips. The closer you are to an enemy when it dies, the more valuable the chip is worth and these chips are totaled together to give you a multiplier and increase your score. The value of the last chip you picked up (5 is the highest value) is locked in and you can switch to your focus shot to make all enemies you kill drop chips with this same value regardless of how far away you are. The goal is then to chain this focus shot for a huge multiplier which essentially boils down to getting right up in the enemy's face and trying to dodge the onslaught of bullets until a wave of popcorn enemies fly down and you switch to your focus shot and grab tons of multiplier chips. If you use your focus shot when you're not chaining, it subtracts from your multiplier. Whatever your multiplier is when you finally defeat the end boss becomes a bonus. I know that's a lot of information thrown at you all at once and hopefully it made some sense. You'll just have to trust me that it doesn't take to long to get the hang of things once you figure out what's going on.

The game takes place over 5 stages that each include a huge mechanized mid-boss as well as a final boss.  The first four of these stages have a perfect length and are memorable and action packed.  The final stage, as is the case in most Cave games, is overly long and tends to overstay its welcome. But, overall it's almost perfectly paced with no lulls or downtime.  The waves of enemies fly out at you in way that is reminiscent of a rhythm game and once you memorize everything and get into your flow, it's almost trance-like. 

While I do find this score system to be fascinating, it doesn't really fall into my playstyle. I'm not a, "get up in your face" kind of gamer. However, it was so intriguing and fun that I did learn some routs and timing for the first half of the game that allowed me to get a fairly decent score and pick up a couple of extends. In addition to this, there are a couple of secret 1Ups hidden in stages 3 and 5 respectively and if you're able to snag them will be a huge boon to your success. Believe me when I say that you're going to need these extends because the game, as I mentioned before, is absolutely brutal. If I had to put it into words, I would say that Normal Arcade mode is like... extreme mode on most other shmups. This is even referenced in the game's title. Even the easy difficulty in standard Arcade mode will give most shmup veterans a run for their money. Ketsui roughly translates to, "Determination." And, that's something you'll need in spades to truly tackle this monster of a game.

To help with this, the masters over at M2 have added in a ridiculous amount of features and modes into this PS4 port to help you learn the game and tweak its characteristics to your liking. Firstly, there's a much desired Super Easy mode so anyone can have a chance at this game. It's an absolute blast to play and is one of the biggest features of this version of the game. It really slows down the bullet speed and thins out the massive amount of them that you normally have to deal with. Yet, it doesn't make the game feel like a passive endeavor as there is still plenty of engaging gameplay there for even experts. Additionally, there's the titular Deathtiny mode that acts as an arrange mode that has completely redesigned scoring mechanics and different survival tactics and is the big draw for the PS4 release for huge fans of the game as it rewrites the way the game is played. Not only that, there's a super hard version of the game that was used for a shmup competition years ago that has been previously unplayable until now and is so comically difficult that I'm surprised there's more than a handful of people in the world that would even have the slightest chance to clear it. There's even a custom arcade mode where you can set and change almost any parameter of of the game and has 10 different difficulty settings to tune the the gameplay to your specifications. It really helps you slowly ramp up the difficulty of the game to gradually get better and better and makes getting a clear on the game much easier since you can start from any section of any stage and build up your skills over time. This will eventually let you work up to the 100% perfect port of the arcade version of the game included in this package. If this weren't enough, there's also the Arcade Challenge mode that's become a mainstay of the M2 ShotTriggers releases. It gives you the opportunity to play through every single section of the entire game, on every difficulty, on every loop. You tackle each section of a stage (5-6 each) and if you die, the game rewinds and gives you another attempt to try again. You'll have a set number of attempts before the game makes you restart from the beginning of the section. If you're able to clear that section, you're graded on how well you do and how many attempts it took you before it will allow you to move onto the next one and give it a shot. It basically turns each section of the game into a mini-game that allows you to clear the entire game in segments and is a massive training tool and is the most valuable part of the entire package. Not only that, the game also gives you save states, records spots in the game where you die repeatedly and allows you to replay them whenever you want, and has plenty widgets to let you know how you're doing and where you need to improve. These tools give you everything you need to succeed if you're willing to put in the work.

Presentation:

The graphics of this game are pretty good and have that standard chunky sprite-work that Cave is so well known for. The backgrounds and settings of each stage are standard fare with military bases, ship ports, and cityscapes. With the military theme of the game, you'll encounter an assortment of tanks, planes, helicopters, ships, and other vehicles that are appropriate but aren't really anything special to look at. Unfortunately, this is the same for the bosses and mid-bosses who, while they are huge war machines, aren't particularly inspired in their design and are rather forgettable. All of this is set in a rather drab and dull color pallet that certainly looks like it's straight out of wartime and is most likely exactly the look that the designers were going for. Sadly, none of it is very interesting to look at and is rather boring and generic. I've seen so many shmups like the 19XX series, Strikers, etc. that have this same military based aesthetic but seem to stand out just a little more. Maybe it's because there's no real way to present a war-time game without making it look muted and covered in greys and greens, but it feels like I've seen it all countless times. I wish Cave would have gone with a more outrageous art style and put as much thought into the look of the game as they did with the gameplay.

Sadly, in addition to this, the soundtrack of the game is rather boring and repetitive. It has a sort of rock mixed with electronic EDM feel that is present in a lot of Cave's most known games. Sadly, the chord progressions tend to just shuffle back and forth without ever really going anywhere and there's very little melody and the only slight hook that I can recall from the soundtrack is at the end of stage 4 and is too brief. The sound effects sound good an punchy but are nothing to write home about either and blend in too much with the music the give an overall muddled sound. A truly memorable soundtrack could have propelled this game into the stratosphere and cemented it in it's throne on the top of the shmup pile.

On a positive note, this version of the game contains rearranged music that you can choose to use instead of the standard soundtrack if you want to mix things up. Unfortunately, this music is all based off the original score and just doesn't have a good enough base in terms of its composition to be turned into anything exceptional.

Final Thoughts:

This leaves us with shmup that has an interesting premise, near perfect gameplay, but has a really boring and generic looking art style with mediocre music. The game is extremely difficult on the standard arcade mode, but this release gives enough alternate modes and training tools to provide worthwhile gameplay for anyone who wants to give Ketsui a shot. Despite it's mediocre presentation, the gameplay alone is good enough to not only carry the game, but even launch it into rarified air. While I do side with the general consensus of this being one of the hardest games of all time, I disagree with it being the #1 shmup of all time because of its aesthetic shortcomings. It is such a fantastic game, though, that it probably would have been my favorite shmup of all time if it had better art style, character design, and music. As it sits, it's still near the top of the list, but doesn't quite grab the top spot. Yes, it's so difficult that people spend years and years learning the game and honing their skills just to be able to do the 2nd loop, but that isn't really a requirement to have a worthwhile experience with the game. While I do love the game, and put in enough time to get the platinum trophy for it, I don't want to dedicate my life to its mastery... as that is what the highest levels of the game requires from its most devoted players.

This is honestly the best package I've ever seen on a shmup. The features, modes, and just general gameplay are all top notch and it's truly remarkable what M2 provided with the release of this game and I'll purchase any other game from the ShotTriggers series that they decide to make. There's really nothing more you could ever want from a shmup release.

I would recommend this game to anyone and everyone. If you have the ability to play it, you should do so as soon as you can. It's a must have for anyone who has even the slightest interest in playing shmups and an awesome experience even for the casual gamer.

Final Status: Completed (platinum trophy acquired, 1CC on several modes)

Final Score: 9/10 (almost perfect gameplay set in a boring world)

Bullet Soul (Xbox 360) Review

 

Bullet Soul (Xbox 360) Review

Release Date: 7 April 2011

Date Played: 23 January 2022

Introduction:

Bullet Soul is one of those region free shmups for the the Xbox 360 that all fans of the genre are clamoring to get and commands a pretty high price these days.  It was developed by 5pb, the creators of Phantom Breaker and purveyors of copious amounts of visual novels, and released only in Japan.  Sadly, while the Xbox 360 is a shmup powerhouse, it wasn't popular in the East and this game never really garnered the attention that the developers hoped for.  It was met with a lukewarm reception by both critics and the public alike and it wasn't long before 5pb updated the game and released another version called Infinite Burst that is more well regarded and commands an even higher price.  When held up against some of the other truly fantastic shmups on the system like Deathsmiles, Ketsui, and the DoDonPachi games, Bullet Soul didn't really stand a chance.  However, that doesn't stop it from being a really fun, and albeit very barebones and simple, shmup that is better than everyone makes it out to be.

Gameplay:

As stated above, Bullet Soul is a pretty basic shmup that steals most of its gameplay mechanics from the venerable developer, Cave's various games but dumbs them down to a point that's honestly more refreshing than insulting.  Firstly, there are no difficulty options and you're stuck with the one and only skill level available.  After that, you chose from 1 of 3 ship types.  There's the Blue ship piloted by Yun, a sexy police officer, that has a balanced attack and speed that focuses on a lock on laser, a Red ship piloted by Zenichi, the attitude filled "bad boy" who is the fastest and weakest of the ships, and finally the Yellow ship piloted by Sadahl, an extremely powerful king with lock-on missiles and the highest attack power and slowest speed by far.  Some of the criticisms of the game like to point out that these 3 ships are unbalanced and that Zenichi is so weak that he's practically impossible and that Sadahl is so powerful that he makes the game a skilless and boring endeavor.   Other people have exactly the opposite opinion and and see Zenichi as the strongest while Sadahl is nothing more than a walking (...flying) bullseye.  Whatever the case, I found all of the ships to be viable and very different from each other.  My first 1 Credit Clear of the game was with Zenichi as I found his speed to be very beneficial to my playstyle. However, I was almost able to clear the game on my first try with Yun. Zenichi's power makes him formidable, but really changes how you play.  Whichever you decide to choose, don't listen to the peanut gallery of the internet and let them deter you, they are all a fun and worth your time.  

After you select your ship, you're dumped right into battle.  Gameplay is a fairly standard vertical shmup.  You're given two shot types, a spread shot that is better for weaker enemies and allows you to maintain your speed, and a focus shot that concentrates your firepower on a smaller area but slows you down greatly.  This, of course, was lifted directly from the Cave games that Bullet Soul tries to hard to emulate.  It's a tried and true method that works well here even if it isn't very original. You also have access to bombs to save you in the nick of time that also have a wonderfully forgiving option for them to auto-bomb if you accidentally get hit. In addition to taking ideas from Cave games, this game's gimmick is the bullet cancelling mechanic.  In most Cave games if you kill certain enemies after they've fired at you, the bullets that they've spewed all over the screen disappear and turn into tokens to increase your score.  Learning which enemies do this, and figuring out the timing of when to eliminate them is one of the charms of playing a shmup from Cave's catalog. Seeing all of those deadly projectiles suddenly turn harmless is a dopamine rush and it's exhilarating to see how far you can push it. Bullet Soul, on the other hand, takes this idea to the max and allows you to bullet cancel every single enemy in the game.  This turns the bullets into "ghost bullets" that you can collect to increase your score multiplier.  This means, if you learn to rout the level correctly, you basically won't have to dodge hardly any bullets at all for most of the stages.

Of course, this flies directly in the face of what most people love about playing shmups.  Where is the skill in hanging back and relaxing, right? It's a stubborn take, and it's not entirely wrong.  However, Bullet Soul doesn't really play like that.  In order to collect all of those "ghost bullets" that you need for a high score, you need to get right up in the face of most of the enemies as you take them out so the "ghost bullets" don't have a chance to spread out too much for you to collect them.  If you're playing for score, this will ramp up the difficulty for sure and will give you plenty of a challenge if that's what you're looking for. If you just want to get the 1 credit clear, sit way back and try to pop off the enemies from a distance.  It certainly makes your life easier.

As for the difficulty, the internet is once again all over the place. One commenter said something to the effect of, "when you can just sit in one spot, never move, hold the fire button, and clear the first two stages of the game, you know you have a balance problem."  Others called the game, "very challenging" and were upset there was no easy mode to help them succeed.  Once again, I would advise you to form your own opinion or, better yet, blindly listen to me because I feel like the difficulty was fair and I would put it in the lower-medium range for a shmup. You can't just sit back and never move like that commenter said as you still have to somewhat memorize the patterns of the enemies and take them out quickly before they have a chance to overwhelm you with insane amounts of bullets they throw at your ship. On the other hand, you can take far riskier moves since you know that you'll neutralize the bullets before they can hit you. Knowing how to time all of this is really nice and the stages have a fantastic flow to them. I would say that the game would be fantastic choice for someone looking to get into the genre.

The bosses are a bit of a juxtaposition however.  Unlike most of the other enemies in the game that usually die rather quickly so you can rack up an insane score multiplier, the bosses are overly tanky and take far too long to kill.  They typically have many destructible parts that will allow you to cancel some bullets here and there to give you a little breathing room, but most of the time it feels like a true danmaku bullet hell game.  Some of them have 6-7 phases each and can take several minutes as you slowly chip away at their health bar.  On a positive note, the bullet patterns on the boss fights are pretty unique and have some of the coolest ideas I've seen in a long time. The developer had some real potential for coming up with inspired dodging ideas and it shows.  It's really fun to learn to weave through all of the bullets blanketing the screen and you really get into a nice flow-state when you're in the thick of things.  It's just a shame that they go on for too long and either repeat the same pattern over and over or fly through a series of them before you have a chance to even see what they do.

There's also a score attack mode as well as a training mode, but they really only let you to select a stage and tackle it from the beginning. If you're stuck on a certain stage, this will be handy for some practice, but I honestly never needed it and was able to 1 credit clear the 30 minute long game after about 3 hours of playing it from the beginning each time I had to continue.  If you're interested in just playing through the game and have no desire to 1 credit clear it and don't want to play for score, you get extends every 60 million points and there are unlimited continues that put you right back where you died.  So, you'll have no opposition if you want to credit feed.

There's also a simultaneous 2-player mode if you want to experience the game with a friend.

Presentation:

When the game starts up you're greeted by a very cheaply done anime theme song that has hardly any animation and is composed primarily of the same few pieces of artwork from the game's promotional material.  It does the job, but feels very phoned in and you can tell that the developers just didn't have the time and/or funds to put into this intro.   As for the characters, they have really nice art styles that I enjoy. Sadly, you only really get to see these in the menus, title screen, and as borders to the playfield and consist of the same artwork used in the into.  The gameplay itself has a decent but somewhat uninspired 3D rendered look to it.  It's pretty chunky and has a lot of muted colors that don't stand up to the gorgeous sprite work that is employed so often by Cave or games from the 16-bit era.  But, it's not ugly and can even have some nice effects during the game's 5 levels.  You'll travel over a city scape, through space, a bug infested forest, and dash through hyperspace before coming to the enemy base.  All the levels feel pretty different and each have their own distinctive look and feel to them.  

As for the story, there's none to speak of.  You're not given any exposition or revealing cutscenes or anything.  Even an internet search didn't turn up any information about it.  Maybe there's something in the manual, but unfortunately, I don't read Japanese so I'm at a loss.  The character designs are so unique and interesting that I would actually like to learn more about them. Why is the police officer hanging out with a king?  Is the red guy a pirate?  What is going on? I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish this shmup had more story to it... 

One really highlight of the game is the soundtrack.  It's a rocking fare with wailing guitars, pounding drums, and a ton of low end to really push your sound system.  It starts off with a bang and never lets up for the entire game and there are plenty of cool guitar harmonies and epic chord progressions to scratch that Japanese power metal itch. You can tell the developers knew they had a banger score on their hands because the game came with a soundtrack pressed to CD right there in the case. That's a pretty awesome bonus and I'm really thankful that they decided to include it.  Most of these songs I wouldn't mind listening to in my car and there is no doubt that my opinion of the game is elevated somewhat by the excellent music as it really does amp up the overall experience. 

 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts:

Everyone is simultaneously both right and wrong about this game.  All of their criticisms are justified as the game does ripoff most of its ideas from other games. Despite the fantastic music, the presentation is pretty humdrum. The character artwork is nice and inspired, but I feel like they never do anything with it. During gameplay, the game looks like a thrift store version of a Cave game... which I guess is actually what this game is.  There is no difficulty select... and the game can either be too easy or too hard based on which character you select and how you decide to play with them.  If you pick the yellow guy and hang back, you're going to get overwhelmed with bullets.  If you pick the red guy and get too close, you're going to be smacked by a ship flying right into you.  I can see how someone would get frustrated or bored going into the game and it not really play the way they expected.  You really do need to understand how the characters work to get the most fun out of the experience.  Sadly, because of the bullet cancelling mechanic, even if you're not playing correctly, you can continue to succeed in a sort of dull and meandering way until the later stages where things really jump up in difficulty before getting demolished.  

Still, I had a really good time with Bullet Soul and enjoyed every minute of playtime with it. I had a lot of fun playing through the levels and really liked the boss battles despite their bloated length. If these had been tweaked somewhat, that would have gone a long way to bringing this game up to the level the developers obviously wished for.  I'm sure this was addressed in the updated version that came out not long after the original.  I may actually have to go out of my way to get my hands on a copy.

Not every shmup needs to be extremely complicated and packed with tons of mechanics and scoring systems. Nor does it need to have such an extreme difficulty curve where it takes dedicated players years to master the game.  Sometimes, you just want to sit back, shoot, and dodge a few bullets here and there. Sometimes, you want to inch right up to the danger zone and see how long you can maintain before meeting your fate.  Bullet Soul does both of these really well and bridges the gap between very casual games and brain meltingly difficult bullet hell shmups.  It won't take anyone very long to get the hang of it and get to experience it to its fullest.  However, because of this, it doesn't have the staying power that die-hard fans in the community crave so desperately.  

Final Status: Beaten (1 credit cleared)

Final Score: 7/10 (A fun shmup lacking in features)

Quarth (Famicom) Review

Quarth (Famicom) Review

Date Released: 13 April 1990

Date Played: 17 January 2022

Introduction:

Quarth is a quirky game developed by Konami.  It's a mixture of a 2D puzzle game like Tetris combined with a vertical scrolling shmup (or so Wikipedia would have you believe).  It was originally released in arcades back in 1989 and was known as Block Hole outside of Japan.  This version released for the Famicom is a good port and is a ton of fun to play. It's very tiring to play though and your fingers will be begging for mercy, so break out your NES Advantage Joystick and get your hands all limbered up, because you're going to need every bit of dexterity that you can muster.

Gameplay:

You play as one of two ships that are completely identical other their appearance.  One is a standard space ship that appears to be decked out for battle and is basically as generic as possible.  The other one is a cute lunar lander capsule that's being carried by cherubs and totally awesome and unique.  I love it and have no idea why anyone would ever choose the boring old space ship. On this same screen you can select which of the 10 levels you would like to start from (like Tetris).  Each of these have increased difficulty and if you start from the beginning, get ready for the long haul because it will take a while and the tendons in your hands will be screaming. Still, it's nice to be able to pick up where you left off without having to spend a bunch of time playing through the same easier stages over and over again.

Gameplay is unique and I don't know of any games quite like this.  It does share some similarities with other games in terms of concepts and execution, but it's really its own thing and I'm surprised it isn't more well known.  Your ship sits at the bottom of the screen and can move left or right as the screen slowly scrolls upwards.  Instead of enemies to shoot, you will encounter various quadrilateral (squares and rectangles for those of us who haven't had geometry in a couple of decades) shapes with missing pieces.  Your ship shoots blocks instead of bullets and your goal is to fill in the missing pieces of the rectangles.  When a rectangle is made whole, it will vanish and award you with points. This is obviously very similar to Tetris as you have to train yourself to recognize patterns and prioritize which blocks to clear first. The trick is to find groups of rectangles placed together and chain them into one huge block for a bonus score and to clear the screen faster. One technique that you'll need to employ if you want to succeed is to realize that the screen stops scrolling as the blocks are cleared.  So, if you clear a large block for a big score bonus, you'll have several seconds of the screen scrolling being frozen.  This is your opportunity to try to clear the remaining blocks on the screen.  Keeping these clears chained together is essential to have time to deal with everything and if you're not able to clear the blocks fast enough, and they reach the line right above your ship, you crash and lose a life.  Once you're out of lives, it's game over.  There are several powerups to assist you. They have abilities that range from stopping the scrolling, giving score multipliers, or even destroying all blocks on screen. It's a fantastic system and is a perfect example of easy to learn and difficult to master.  You'll know everything you need to after only a couple of minute and is a perfect example of pick up and play arcade fun.

As mentioned above, there are 10 levels broken into 10 sections each and clearing each one will advance you to the next.  Difficulty ramps up very quickly and by stage 3, things will start to get pretty tense and hectic for the average gamer.  When using a joystick, you'll find yourself quickly tapping the fire button in rhythmic patterns as you tap the joystick to move quickly around the screen.  The way you control the joystick feels a lot like the Magical Drop series of games and if you were to watch someone's hands without knowing what game they're playing, you would have a tough time differentiating between the two.  I'm not sure how anyone can make much progress on this game using a standard controller because you'd have blisters on your fingers in no time.  You have to input a ton of commands at lightning speed even on some of the lower levels and it's very impressive to watch someone truly skilled have a go at this game.  Typing this review right now, my wrists are still tight and sore from my previous play session.

There are some 2-player cooperative and competitive options if you can get a friend to play with you.  They're a lot of fun and can get pretty intense during a heated play session.

Presentation:

Quarth looks pretty decent for a puzzle game from the 8-bit era.  You don't want things to look too busy because you need to read the patterns on the screen at lightning speed, but everything is colorful and vibrant. The backgrounds, borders, and blocks all have pallet swaps between stages and while overall aesthetics are sparse it really helps in the graphics department.   The music that accompanies the game is decent enough and has that trademark Konami feel, but it certainly isn't one of their best and even after hours of playing this game with the same couple of tracks repeated over and over, I can't even recall what they sound like or if there's a catchy melody. It's almost as if it went in one ear and right out the other.  Not a good sign for a game with such addictive gameplay. Still, as basic as the presentation is, it doesn't do anything to hinder the amount of fun you'll be having.

Conclusion:

This is a great little game that I'm surprised not more people know about.  It never left Japan on the Famicom and the only Western release (outside of the arcade) that I know of is on the original Game Boy.  I'm sure plenty people played it there as Konami was probably trying to cash in on the puzzle game craze that was brought on by Tetris being the pack-in game for the Game Boy, but I've never heard anyone mention it. It's a shame that it wasn't brought to the NES because I think it would have been a fairly popular game.  It's a ton of fun even if the music is a little lackluster and playing for more than a few minutes is super hard on your hands .  Other than that, my only complaint about the game is that I don't really see the shmup comparison.  If the screen just fell downwards like in Tetris rather than your ship flying upwards, no one would ever remotely consider comparing it to a shmup. Still, I see what Konami was aiming for and I commend them on an original concept even if it was a little harebrained.

If you're a fan of puzzle games or tense and twitch based arcade gaming, you have to give Quarth a try.  It's an underrated gem for sure.

Final Status: Played (I could clear up to stage 6)

Final Score: 8/10 (Pretty Great)